Lingering effects from the pandemic are still showing up in classrooms across our region. Chronic absenteeism is one of the leading causes.
Chronic absenteeism in Virginia is defined as any student who has missed more than 18 days of school. The number of absences has jumped from 8% in 2019 to 16% in 2021 and it stayed at that level the past two years.
To combat this, Alexandria City Public Schools launched an app called Parent Square to track absenteeism in grades 6-12 in real time. It logs reports at the end of first period, at lunchtime and after school. Email and text notifications are then sent to parents in their preferred language.
Hope Murphy, the attendance and truancy outreach specialist for the school system, said that the app has been an important tool to notify families.
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According to the U.S. Department of Education, students who are chronically absent in pre-K, kindergarten or first grade are less likely to read at their grade level by the third grade.
“I would say chronic absenteeism is a problem everywhere, because in elementary school, we’re laying the foundation for that learning that takes place in middle and high school,” said Michael Routhouska, the principal at William Ramsay Elementary School.
Routhouska said that the chronic absenteeism rate at his school dropped from 24% to 14% last year. Elementary schools take attendance at the beginning of the day.
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Routhouska hopes that identifying students who are on the path of chronic absenteeism and figuring out how the school can support those families can lead to celebrating improved attendance.
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